Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/jackel/jt-1-1

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: David Irving's Hitler, Essay I
Summary: Eberhard Jaeckel's Essays on David Irving (English translation)
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.org
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Irving
Archive/File: pub/people/i/irving.david/jackel/jt-1-1 (Part 1 of 6)
Last-modified: 1996/02/26
Two Essays on David Irving's Holocaust Denial <1>
by Eberhard Ja"ckel <2>
Translated by H. David Kirk <3>
Jackel Essay 1:
Refutation of the absurd thesis that "Hitler Is innocent in
the murder of Europe's Jews"[21]
Preliminaries[22]
In those [Nazi] times one could frequently hear people say:
"Just you wait till the Fuehrer gets wind of it!" by which
they meant that if Hitler knew, he would certainly rectify
not only certain unpleasant aspects of daily life but also
the immense horrors of the regime. It helped people cope both
with such minor annoyances as train delays, bad weather,
or a Nazi boss's drunken antics, and with real injustices and
crimes. When used as a joke it was not, like many other ones,
directed against the regime: even then it had a deeper
meaning. It removed the person of the Fuehrer, who after all
couldn't be expected to concern himself with everything, from
the shortcomings and arbitrary acts of his subordinates.
From the start, this formula was applied to the murder of the
Jews. Even if Himmler and his sinister SS and Gestapo
executioners were thought capable of it, the Fuehrer was not.
Had he known of it, he would surely have interfered. Such was
the rumor during the war and the open talk afterwards. This
kind of drivel has been and continues to be written by neo-
Nazis who should really be called "stone-age" Nazis.
In their attempted cleanup of the Fuehrer's person such
people are helped by the fact that in the case of the mass
murder of the Jews there exists no written, personally
signed, order of Hitler's. For years historians searched for
such an order and when none was found they turned to other
issues. Nevertheless, no serious scholar has concluded that
this century's most horrible crime could have been undertaken
without Hitler's will or knowledge.
Now someone has come along, an Englishman yet, who in an
otherwise well-regarded book serves up the same absurd
thesis. His book has the earmarks of scholarship: it cites
sources and has annotations, and its author is so certain of
himself that he has offered to donate $1,000 (US) to some
charitable fund if anyone can identify a wartime document
that shows Hitler, prior to October 1943, ordering or even
knowing of the biological liquidation of the Jews of Western
Europe.
Quite a wager, wouldn't you say? But don't be misled: the
clever bettor was not entirely foolhardy; he made sure not to
give the power of verification to some neutral body like a
university or a scientific organization. He insists that he,
entirely on his own, will be the judge of whether a document
is genuine, and whether his thesis has in fast been
contradicted. Now that can hardly be called "fair play"; it
is nothing less than a sleight of hand trick.
This smart-alecky young man is David Irving and his book is
Hitler's War. It raised a furor in the media. Its reviews
were consistently negative. Oxford University's Hugh Trevor
Roper,[23] one of the greatest authorities in this field,
called Irving's methodology defective.
Publication History of Hitler's War
The book has a strange prehistory story. It first appeared in
1975 in German under the title Hitler and his Generals.[24]
Though its reception was critical, its source material was
praised. This version of the book did not provoke anger or
indignation, and for a good reason: it did not contain the
disturbing thesis of Hitler's innocence. That part had been
carefully eliminated. Irving has now distanced himself from
this version of his book and has forbidden any further
edition of it. He claims that it had been substantially
abbreviated and altered without his doing.
The director of the Ullstein Publishing House, Wolf Jobst
Siedler, has some interesting contrary information. On
May 7, 1974, a year prior to the book's publication, he had
written to Irving concerning Irving's discussion of the
"liquidation of the Jews." He had emphasized that "in a
publishing house under my direction no book shall appear for
which I cannot take political and historical responsibility."
He added: "Should you be of a different opinion, we would
have to go our different ways." Irving had not left; he had
stayed.
Since Irving's British and American publishers had fewer
scruples than Siedler, the offending thesis did, after all,
make its appearance there, and likewise in Germany where it
was eagerly received in quite well-known and "interested"
[neo-Nazi] circles. It is common knowledge that the defense
attorneys in the Duesseldorf lawsuit of Majdanek death camp
operatives have made use of Irving's assertion. Now it is
time to take issue with it.
Irving has repeatedly complained that he is being maligned
when his thesis about the murder of the Jews is given so
much prominence, seeing that his book devotes only a small
section of its 926 pages to it. Nor is that wrong. His book
covers much else, and not all of it is shocking; in fact some
of it is worth reading and even enlightening. But only his
thesis [of Hitler's innocence in the murder of the Jews]
attracts attention; Irving himself has given it prominence
by emphasizing it in the very first pages.
The Anatomy of Irving's Thesis
Thus he writes that the most persistent of many Hitler
extermination of the Jews." His own inquiry has, he says, led
him to two firm conclusions: (1) that in war dictators are
basically weak and not able to check on all activities of
administering organizations, and (2) that guilt for the
bloody and mindless massacre of the Jews must be laid to a
large number of Germans and not just Hitler. True, with his
antisemitic speeches Hitler stoked the fires of Jew-hatred.
True, he and Himmler had created the SS and set up the
concentration camps. But Irving also claims there is
incontrovertible evidence that Hitler, on the 30th of
November 1941, ordered that there be "no liquidation" of
Jews.

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